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PAGE 10—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—MAY I960
Maryland
(Continued From Page 9)
about a change of policy in the four
major stores and their branches.
The Board of Estimates of Baltimore
voted unanimously to include a non-
discriminatory employment provision in
all city contracts with private firms.
The Southern Hotel lifted all racial
restrictions, becoming the last of the
major hotels in Baltimore to open its
facilities fully to Negroes.
The Committee on Racial Equality
resumed picketing the city’s only pri
vate amusement park, scene of a dis
turbance and arrest of pickets last year.
MISCELLANEOUS
Findings that marked differences be
tween white and Negro children devel
op between infancy and three years of
age have been reported by a husband-
and-wife team of psychiatrists. The
general developmental quotient rises
for white children, while for the Ne
groes it falls, according to Drs. Hilda
Knobloch and Benjamin Pasamanick.
Both are now at Ohio State University
after several years of teaching and re
search at the Johns Hopkins school of
hygiene and public health.
Using data compiled in the course of
a study of prematurity in which about
1,000 Baltimore white and Negro in
fants were tested, the Pasamanicks re
port that when the children used as
full-term controls were tested at 40
weeks of age, there were no significant
differences in any field of behavior be
tween the two racial groups:
“The general developmental (adapt
ive) quotient being 105.4 for the white
infants and 104.5 for the Negro infants.
The figures for gross motor behavior
are 114.7 and 113.4, for fine motor be
havior 97.6 and 99.2, for language be
havior 102.5 and 102.9, and for personal-
social behavior 108.6 and 106.5, respect
ively.”
300 RE-EXAMINED
Approximately 300 of the original
1,000 infants were re-examined at
three years of age to see if the differ
ence between full-term and premature
babies continues beyond infancy. In a
paper presented before the American
Orthopsychiatric Assn., the Pasaman
icks said, “More striking than the per
sistence of differences between prema
tures and controls, however, are the
marked differences which have devel
oped between white and non-white
children.
“A comparison of the full-term con
trol infants shows that there is a
marked racial divergence in adaptive
and language behavior while motor and
personal-social behavior are essential
ly unchanged. The general develop
mental quotient rises to 110.9 for the
white children, while for the Negroes
it falls to 97.4. Similarly language rises
to 106 in the white children and falls
to 90.1 in the non-whites.”
When a curve of the distribution of
developmental quotients is drawn for
the population at three years of age,
the researchers say, “this sharp dichoto
my between white and Negro children
is again evident.” And they describe
one of the graphs in their report as
showing “strikingly” that “the white
and the Negro children are indeed two
different populations.”
ORGANIC FACTORS
They also say:
“In infancy, it seems, factors which
produce differences in intellectual po
tential appear to be largely organic in
nature. In fact, only prenatal experi
ence, birth weight and later physical
status seem to produce group differ
ences of behavior. The sociocultural
factors in infancy, therefore, appear to
be acting on the psychological level of
integration (of the central nervous
system) only indirectly through the
biological level.
“By three years of age, however, the
more direct effect of sociocultural fac
tors on the psychological level of inte
gration is apparent. The dichotomy be
tween the white and non-white chil
dren occurs particularly in adaptive
and language behavior, those areas of
behavior most subject to sociocultural
influences, while motor behavior, which
is more a reflection of neurologic status,
is essentially unchanged.”
Dismissing the argument that the dif
ferences may be due to defects in infant
tests, since in previously published
material “we have demonstrated high
correlations in four large groups of in
fants if a satisfactory infant examina
tion is done by a physician who has
been trained in its use and is skilled in
differentiating neurologic damage from
intellectual inadequacy,” the Pasaman
icks conclude:
UPWARD SPREAD
“It would seem that the upward
spreading in the curves can be ade
quately explained only on the basis of
VIRGINIA
Court
Tells Pulaski High To Ad
II
RICHMOND, Va.
A federal district judge order
ed 14 Negroes admitted to a
Pulaski County white high school
in September. (See “Legal Ac
tion.”)
A federal appeals court upheld
the Alexandria School Board’s
refusal to admit five Negro chil
dren to white schools on the basis
of residence and academic stand
ings. But the court also condemn
ed the maintenance of attendance
areas based on race. (See “Legal
Action.”)
Negroes continued their efforts
to achieve desegregation in eating
facilities in various cities through
out the state and in the Peters
burg and Danville public libraries.
Private segregated schools, set
up in several communities to
avoid public school integration,
generally reported successful op
erations and looked forward to en
larged programs next year. (See
“School Boards and Schoolmen.”)
Fourteen Negroes have been ordered
admitted to Pulaski High School in
September (Crisp v. School Board of
Pulaski County). U. S. District Judge
Roby C. Thompson’s order, issued Ap
ril 21, appeared to clear the way for
more than 100 Negroes to enter Pulaski
Oklahoma
(Continued from Page 9)
establishments generally considered as
doing business with the public.
The demonstration was cancelled. In
stead, some 200 Negroes, along with
some white persons, rallied on the steps
of the state capitol to thank the gov
ernor and to urge elimination of segre
gation in business firms.
The following week Edmondson
named 26 persons to the committee.
Most of his selections are from Okla
homa City, but Tulsa, Muskogee, Nor
man, Idabel, Watonga, McAlester and
Okmulgee are also represented.
The Langston University Alumni
Assn, announced organization of an
Independent Citizens’ Committee, with
Lillard G. Ashley, superintendent of
schools at Boley, as alumni sponsor.
The committee would help the alumni
association’s “present movement to
have the entire state population in
formed of its responsibilities to its state
program of higher education.”
Mrs. Ira D. Hall of Oklahoma City,
publicity director for the alumni group,
indicated the purpose of the movement
is to inspire as much public support
for and citizen participation in the af
fairs of higher education as the lower
schools receive.
Actually the alumni movement was
launched last year when there was talk
in the state Legislature of abolishing
Langston because of its high per capita
cost of operation. Alumni officials
pointed out Langston represented, for
some Negro youths, their only chance
to obtain a college education. # # #
learning, and that one would expect
on this basis a greater improvement in
the white than in the Negro children
and a greater increase as age increases.
Furthermore, it seems logical to con
clude that, since the downward trend
occurs largely in the lower socio-eco
nomic groups, these children have less
exposure to the kinds of experience
that later tests are designed to evalu
ate.
“A variety of organic factors on an
environmental level, such as infection
and malnutrition which are more com
mon in the lower socio-economic
groups, can exert a noxious influence
on the integration of the central ner
vous system as can adverse social and
psychological factors. Since conceptua-
ly intellectual potential is concerned
with prognosis and implies that if
nothing happens to damage the infant,
organically, socially or psychologically,
his future development will be at an
essentially constant rate in terms of
his overall level of adaptive funcion-
ing, even learned behavior must be de
pendent on the basic integration of the
central nervous system.” # # #
and the other county high school in
September 1961.
Pulaski County has no Negro high
school. Negro students are transported
by bus to Christiansburg Institute in
neighboring Montgomery County.
The reason only 14 must be admit
ted to white schools during the coming
year is that Judge Thompson specified
that applications for transfers must be
made by March 15 of each year. At
the time of his order, that date al
ready had passed this year and only
14 Negroes had applied for transfer
prior to that deadline.
GIVES TIME
Judge Thompson explained that he
set the March 15 date to give school
officials adequate time each year to
know how many children would be at
tending each school the following ses
sion.
Pulaski County now has 116 Negroes
attending Christiansburg Institute.
About 16 of these will graduate in
June, while about 30 elementary school
children will advance into the high
school group. This means that more
than 100 Negro youths presumably will
be eligible to apply for transfer to the
county’s white high schools next year.
There are about 2,200 children in the
county’s two all-white high schools.
COURT CONDEMNS
Continuation of separate geographi
cal attendance areas for white and Ne
gro pupils was condemned by the
U. S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
here on April 20 (Jones v. School
Board of Alexandria).
Declared the court:
“Obviously the maintenance of a
dual system of attendance areas based
on race offends the constitutional
rights of the plaintiffs and others simi
larly situated and cannot be tolerated.
“It is not mentioned in the plan of
the Alexandria School Board, and we
may assume, in the absence of more
evidence . . . that the continuance of
the dual system is not contemplated.
“In order that there may be no doubt
about the matter, the enforced main
tenance of such a dual system is here
specifically condemned. However, it
does not follow that there must be an
immediate and complete reassignment
of all the pupils in the public schools
of Alexandria.”
The court’s opinion was given in a
case appealed from the federal district
court at Alexandria. In the lower
court, Judge Albert V. Bryan had ad
mitted nine Negro children to the city’s
white schools in February 1959, but
had upheld the school board in deny
ing admittance to five others. Two of
the five had been denied admittance
because of lack of academic ability and
three because they resided closer to a
Negro school than to the white school
to which they had applied.
UPHELD BOARD
The appeals court last month upheld
the lower court and the school board.
The higher tribunal said:
“The two criteria of residence and
academic preparedness applied to pu
pils seeking enrollment and transfers
could be properly used as a plan to
bring about racial desegregation in ac
cordance with the Supreme Court’s di
rective.
“The record in this case is insuffici
ent in demonstrating that the criteria
were not so applied. On the other
hand, these criteria could be used in
such a way as to be a vehicle for frus
trating the constitutional requirement
laid down by the Supreme Court . . .
“If the criteria should be applied
only to Negroes seeking transfer and
enrollment in particular schools and
not to white children, then the use of
the criteria could not be sustained. Or,
if the criteria are, in the future, ap
plied only to applications for transfer
and not to applications for initial en
rollment by children not previously at
tending the city’s school system, then
such action would also be subject to
attack on constitutional grounds. For
by reason of the existing segregation
pattern it will be Negro children, pri
marily, who seek transfers.”
LEGAL FRONT
Other developments on the legal
front in desegregation controversies in
Virginia included:
I) The Newport News school board
on April 15 submitted in federal dis
trict court a plan providing for assign
ments and transfers of pupils without
regard to race. The plan, similar to the
one used in the neighboring city of
Norfolk, provides that every applicant
for assignment or transfer must take a
test administered by the school super
intendent. Factors that may be con
sidered in the assignments include
mental and moral health, intelligence,
suitability of existing curricula to the
applicant, and his adaptability to the
emotional and social adjustment to be
made. Negro attorneys attacked the
plan but Judge Walter E. Hoffman
ruled it constitutional on its face.
2) On April 25, U. S. District Judge
Albert V. Bryan at Richmond ordered
Prince Edward County to desegregate
its schools. This has no practical ef
fect since the county has abandoned
its public schools. Attorneys for the
National Assn, for the Advancement
of Colored People submitted the pro
posed order under the usual legal pro
cedure, wherein the prevailing side in
a case drafts the order outlined by the
court and submits it for approval. This
latest action came almost a full year
after the Fourth Circuit Court of Ap
peals had ruled that Prince Edward
must desegregate its schools.
3) The new anti-trespass ordinance
adopted in Petersburg (See Southern
School News, April 1960) was upheld
by the city’s Hustings Court, the low
est state court of record. Judge Oliver
A. Pollard overruled a motion to void
the ordinance, submitted by lawyers
for a Virginia State College student
who had been fined $50 in Municipal
Court when he refused to leave the
white section of the public library.
Judge Pollard will hear the case on its
merits May 3 and will set hearing
dates for the cases of 10 other Negroes
who were arrested on similar charges.
The daughter of the woman who
gave Petersburg its public library has
urged city officials to desegregate the
facility. The request was made by Mrs.
Robert W. Claiborne of Richmond in a
letter to Petersburg Mayor Walter W.
Edens.
The library was given to the city in
1923 in memory of Mrs. Claiborne’s
father, William R. McKenney. The
deed specified that the basement of the
building be used as a library for Ne
groes.
Mrs. Claiborne said in her letter that
in the light of public sentiment in
1923, the donor’s requirement that the
basement be used by Negroes repre
sented an affirmative, rather than a
negative, approach to racial relations.
She added she believed that her
mother, if alive today, would want the
library desegregated.
ENACT ORDINANCE
On Feb. 27, 140 Negro students
staged a sit-down demonstration in
sections of the library reserved for
white patrons. City Council soon there
after enacted an ordinance against
trespassing on public property, and on
March 7, 11 Negroes were arrested on
trespassing charges in the library. The
11 were convicted in the lower court
and their cases are pending on appeal.
In Danville, May 6 has been set as
the date for a federal court hearing
on the NAACP’s petition for an in
junction to desegregate that city’s li
brary. A white group of about 25 per
sons has asked that the white library
and its Negro branch be closed if the
injunction is granted.
Demonstrations against segregated
eating facilities continued in several
Virginia cities.
Fifty Negro children are applying
for admission next fall to white or
predominantly white schools in north
ern Virginia. Twenty-seven are seek
ing entry in Fairfax County, 18 in
Arlington County and five in the city
of Alexandria. Arlington and Alexan
dria already have some desegregated
schools.
School officials of the three com
munities said the applications would
be forwarded to the State Pupil Place
ment Board in Richmond. The board
has made hundreds of thousands of
placements but has never made an in
tegrated assignment, except in the
cases of four Negro children in Nor
folk, whom the board assigned to white
schools in order to avoid a contempt
of court citation.
PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Successful operations during 1959-60
and optimistic outlooks for the coming
year are reported by private segre
gated school systems in several Vir
ginia communities where public schools
have been desegregated.
In general, administrators of the pri
vate systems report that they are hav
ing no serious financial problems, that
the quality of instruction is high and
that they expect larger enrollments in
lit Negroes
the fall. Some of the systems are
launching school construction projects.
Public schools in these communities
also report that the year has been a
good one—except, of course, in Prince
Edward County, where public schools
are closed. There has been no word
of any significant racial trouble result
ing from the desegregation that has oc
curred.
WARREN COUNTY
In Warren County, where the com
munity is split down the middle over
the school issue, the private Warren
County Educational Foundation an
nounced that it will raise its teachers’
salaries to equal those of the county’s
public school teachers. A 22-classroom,
$250,000 high school is being planned
to house the Mosby Academy, now lo
cated in a restaurant-club near the
outskirts of Front Royal.
The academy has an enrollment of
425, compared to 406 in the integrated
public Warren County High School.
The 406 in the public school includes
19 Negroes. The school was integrated
in February 1959.
The academy’s 18 teachers will be
supplemented by three new staff mem
bers in the fall, according to Hugh D.
McCormick, head of the Educational
Foundation.
Students at the academy pay tuition
fees with grants received from state
and local funds. McCormick says the
academy is in good financial condition.
With so many Warren County chil
dren attending the private academy,
the 406 remaining in the public high
school are enjoying the benefits of an
excellent teacher-pupil ratio. There
are 28 teachers, plus the principal, as
sistant principal, librarian and guid
ance director.
According to parents, the student
bodies at both the private and the
public high schools feel challenged to
do good work under the present con
ditions.
A Richmond News Leader reporter
who surveyed the situation reported
that the bitter feeling of animosity,
previously prevalent in Warren County
between the opposing sides, has given
way to acceptance of the dual-school
situation.
NORFOLK
In Norfolk, the Tidewater Academy
is winding up its second successful
year of operation, according to James
G. Martin IV, the lawyer who serves
as executive secretary of the Tide
water Educational Foundation, Inc.
“We have a good school, morale is
high and we plan to operate again next
year much as we are this year,” Mar
tin said.
Enrollment at the segregated acad
emy, which covers grades seven
through 12, has grown from 168 in
September of last year to the present
figure of around 200. There are about
12,000 students, including 19 Negroes,
in the city’s integrated public second
ary schools.
Operation of the Tidewater Academy
is financed by a tuition fee of $329.
CHA RLOTTES VILLE
The Charlottesville Educational
Foundation’s all-white private school
system was the center of a contro
versy in March, when two of its top
administrators were fired and another
resigned. (See Southern School News,
April 1960.) The three who left criti
cized the foundation’s operating prac
tices.
But William J. Story Jr., superin
tendent of schools in South Norfolk
and a member of the State Board of
Education, issued a report praising the
Charlottesville foundation’s schools. He
had spent three days studying the sys
tem at the request of the foundation.
The outlook for next year is good,
according to the foundation president,
Henry B. Gordon, because:
1) More tuition grant money is ex
pected to be available from public
funds.
2) A drive will be held for con
tributions to help pay for school facili
ties already constructed.
3) The administrative set-up is be
ing changed to prevent future squab
bles like the one in March.
Gordon said that both the Robert E.
Lee School (190 elementary puriils)
and the Rock Hill Academy (325 high
school students) operated in the red
this year but parents will underwrite
the deficits.
There are about 1,200 students, in
cluding 11 Negroes, in Charlottesville’s
two integrated schools.
PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY
The Prince Edward County private
school operation is unique in that it
has no competition from public schools.
Public schools were abandoned by the
(See VIRGINIA, Page 14)